This writer is kind and thoughtful in her reflections on the end of the 41 year long saga of the denizens of Pine Valley, PA. Pine Valley was a comforting place on tv. It was as easy to breeze in and out of as one’s family home, complete with gossip and your favorite and not so favorite people.
The last episode was a sad, lame, pathetic cop out of a farewell. It was as much non event as the MDA not letting Jerry back to at least sing one last song and wave goodbye.
I predict the replacement show will last approximately 15 minutes and eventually be replaced by infomercials.
All My Children’: Farewell to Pine Valley Forty-one years is a long time to spend in one town, but that’s how long I’ve been making a regular pilgrimage to Pine Valley, the setting for ‘All My Children.’ On Friday, my regular visits will end.
www.latimes.com | By Alice Hoffman | September 23, 2011
Forty-one years is a long time to spend in one town, but that’s how long I’ve been making a regular pilgrimage to Pine Valley, a fictional suburb of Philadelphia and the setting for “All My Children.” I missed days here and there — sometimes even months at a time — but I always returned.
On Friday, my regular visits will end. Although few television shows have had a more devoted fan base, the soap opera has been canceled. There are promises that the show will continue online, but fans are nevertheless mourning the end of an era.
When “All My Children” debuted in January 1970, I was a 17-year-old with no clear plan for the future. Over time, the daytime drama evolved into a touchstone, a way to chart my own life as the years passed. Viewers, myself included, rejoiced at the chance to leave mundane lives behind and enter into the sturm und drang of the show. Surely my time as a salesgirl at Bullock’s was much easier to get through on the days when I could stop into Pine Valley. And throughout my years as a student, and later as a writer, I always looked forward to a designated break, an entrance into a world in which the troubles and turmoil belonged to someone else.
The shell of the "World's Biggest Stove" is all that remains of the Detroit icon at the old state fairgrounds on Monday, August 15, 2011. The stove was destroyed by fire during Saturday's thunderstorms. / ALEXANDRA BAHOU/Detroit Free Press
Detroit's mammoth Garland stove was built in 1893 for an exhibition. It was designed by William Keep, weighed 15 tons and stood 25 feet high, 30 feet long and 20 feet wide. It sat on East Jefferson until 1965 and then was disassembled for awhile until it was reassembled 1998 for the 150th Michigan State Fair. / REGINA H. BOONE/Detroit Free Press
Promo material for this mammoth stove.
Image Detroit Free Press
25-foot-tall ‘World’s Biggest Stove’ burns in Detroit following apparent lightning strike
Aug. 15, 2011 | www.freep.com
Detroit’s iconic giant stove, on the old Michigan State Fairgrounds, was destroyed by fire during Saturday’s thunderstorms.
“It’s one of the major icons, I think, kind of like the big tire out on I-94,” said Michigan photographer and historical photo collector Jan Kaulins, who has studied the background of the metal-and-wood stove. “Just a bit of our history, something that’ll never be replaced. No one’s going to build another ‘World’s Biggest Stove.’ ”
Detroit firefighters said they had seen a lot of lightning strikes in the vicinity of the giant stove at the old Michigan State Fairgrounds at 8 Mile and Woodward just before the fire was called in at 9:05 p.m. Saturday, Acting Captain Pat McNulty said.
When crews arrived, the stove was fully engulfed in flames, he said.
The late Mr Stanley was a tremendously interesting human being who played an important part of a pivotal moment in contemporary western culture. He truly changed the world and seemed to have a tremendously good time doing so. Vegans take note, it was a car crash, not his all meat and dairy diet that claimed his life.
The late Mr Owlsey Stanley
Owsley Stanley: Sound engineer and muse to the Grateful Dead whose LSD laboratory helped shape Sixties counterculture
By Pierre Perrone | www.independent.co.uk | 15 March 2011
The original jam band, The Grateful Dead owed their huge popularity to their marathon live concerts rather than the studio recordings they made between 1965 and 1995. Much of their early success can be attributed to the activities of the colourful counterculture figure Owsley “Bear” Stanley. A long-time associate of the psychedelic group from San Francisco, Stanley manufactured LSD on an industrial scale and fed it to their audience of hippies and freaks during the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury area of the city, helping them tune into the Dead’s potent brand of improvised, free-form music.
But his role went much further. In 1966, he became the band’s financial backer and began to buy and design sound equipment. The public address system he devised for the Dead the same year – a few months after the Beatles had played Shea Stadium using the venue’s basic amplification – included monitor speakers so the musicians could hear themselves on stage. It became known as the Wall of Sound and paved the way for the emergence of arena and stadium shows and huge festival events such as Woodstock. Stanley also served as sound engineer with the Dead and oversaw several of their live albums, including History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One (Bear’s Choice) in 1973, and Steal Your Face in 1976, named after and illustrated with the famous lighting red white and blue bolt skull logo, based on a stencil he designed with Bob Thomas to spray-paint the group’s amplifiers.
“The Dead in those days had to play in a lot of festival-style shows where the equipment would all wind up at the back of the stage in a muddle,” he once explained. “Since every band used pretty much the same type of gear, it all looked alike … I decided that we needed some sort of marking that we could identify from a distance.”
However, his role as manufacturer and purveyor of LSD tended to overshadow his other achievements and have passed into counterculture lore via the bands and songs he inspired, including Blue Cheer – the proto-heavy metal group were named after a particularly potent batch – Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”, the Jefferson Airplane’s “Bear Melt” and “Mexico”, Frank Zappa’s “Who Needs The Peace Corps?” and Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne”, as well as the Dead’s own “Alice D Millionaire”, a pun on a 1966 article about him in the Los Angeles Times headlined “LSD Millionaire”.
“I never set out to change the world,” he said. “I only set out to make sure I was taking something that I knew what it was. And it’s hard to make a little. And my friends all wanted to know what they were taking, too. Of course, my friends expanded very rapidly.”
Audubon Texas Coastal Warden on Sundown Island in April 2010. Photo: Randal Ford
xChester Smith's efforts helped bring back the brown pelican from the brink of extinction. Photo: Randal Ford
Chester Smith, Audubon Texas Coastal Warden, Dies
magblog.audubon.org | By Alisa Opar | 07/15/2011
When Chester Smith hired on as warden of Sundown Island 25 years ago at the age of 65, fewer than 10 pairs of endangered brown pelicans were nesting on the 60-acre manmade isle—one of 80 islands Audubon Texas safeguards on the Texas Gulf Coast. The birds had been hunted and poisoned to near extinction, and Smith was determined to do what he could to save them.
Bruce Barcott described Smith’s efforts in “Coast Guard”:
Over the next quarter century Smith tended the island and its birds like a one-man lifeguard, policeman, and master gardener. “I patrolled it and done my best to ask people not to get out on the island, because they’d scare the birds off their nests and the young ones wouldn’t hatch,” says Smith, a lean, gregarious retired oil refinery worker. “I learned how to keep the fire ants under control. We planted native trees and brush. And over the years we figured out how to keep the island from washing away.”
Thanks to Smith’s dedication, and his small army of volunteers that included many family members, the pelicans flourished on Sundown. This May, the 90-year-old assumed his usual role in leading the annual bird census, which found 2,029 nesting pairs of brown pelicans. It was one of Smith’s last visits to the island. He died on June 26 from complications associated with a major stroke he suffered the week before.
Mikey Wild wasn’t his real name. He stuck out in a crowd and many a lady has found herself the object of his earnest affection. While a younger man he was very active in the music scene and spent a lot of time on South Street. As he matured he hung out in his family neighborhood around 9th street’s Italian Market where he hung out and made and sold artwork.
This was a difficult post for me to make.
Mikey Wild in the early 90s doing on his signature songs, I was punk before you were punk, punk
Mikey performing at his own benefit show doing Zombies in the Basement one of the “scary psychedelic” songs he favored later in life
Mikey Wild, 56, punk rocker and South St. mainstay
May 26, 2011|By Sally A. Downey, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Michael A. DeLuca, 56, a punk rocker, artist, and South Street institution known as “Mikey Wild,” died of lung cancer Wednesday, May 25, at Penn Rittenhouse Hospice in Philadelphia.
Mr. DeLuca, who was mentally handicapped, left his residential school at 18, returned home to South Philadelphia, and began to spend his days on South Street. He was soon singing at JC Dobbs Bar with the Magic Lantern, the Mess, and other bands, sometimes jumping onstage when others were performing.
A huge Beatles fan, Mr. DeLuca sang a raucous version of “Day Tripper.” Other favorites included “Die, Die, Die,” “I was Punk Before You Were a Punk, Punk,” and “I Hate New York,” which was recorded as a single. He was the subject of several YouTube videos.
Recently local filmmaker Isaac Williams produced a half-hour movie, Paying the Price, featuring Mr. DeLuca, who played two roles: Vincent Price, his favorite actor, and Price’s twin brother, Brandon. “Michael always loved horror movies,” said his mother, Gloria DeLuca.
Unlike what happened to others with similarly troubled minds in pop, nobody ever tried to take advantage of him, said A.D. Amorosi, a friend who writes about music for The Inquirer. “Nobody wanted to exploit Mikey. They only sought collaboration. They only wanted to pay respect to the guy they knew from hanging around South Street,” Amorosi said.
A heavy smoker, Mr. DeLuca quit when he was diagnosed with lung cancer three years ago, his mother said. Though he continued to practice with a band, Scareho, he had less energy for singing and painted more, she said. He used colored markers to draw giant lizards and abstract portraits of a variety of characters, including Vincent Price and Santa Claus.
Norma “Duffy” Lyon first sculpted a cow from butter for the Iowa State Fair in 1960. She retired in 2006. REGISTER FILE PHOTO
Duffy Lyon, ‘butter cow lady’ of State Fair fame, dies at 81
www.desmoinesregister.com | Jun. 27, 2011
Norma Lyon, the “butter cow lady” whose sculptures were a primary Iowa State Fair attraction for decades, died of a stroke early Sunday, relatives said. She was 81.
Family members said they will remember Norma Duffield Stong Lyon, or “Duffy,” as a determined woman with an artistic spirit.
“She had this desire, almost a need, to do sculptures. It was a great outlet for her talent,” her husband, Joe Lyon, said Sunday night. “She enjoyed it and the acclaim it brought.”
Who better to speak about Clarence Clemons than Bruce Springsteen? Below is taken verbatim from brucespringsteen.net
The late Clarence Clemons. Image Jo lopez photography from brucespringsteen.net
This is a slightly revised version of the eulogy I delivered for Clarence at his memorial. I’d like to thank all our fans and friends who have comforted us over the past difficult weeks
FOR THE BIG MAN
I’ve been sitting here listening to everyone talk about Clarence and staring at that photo of the two of us right there. It’s a picture of Scooter and The Big Man, people who we were sometimes. As you can see in this particular photo, Clarence is admiring his muscles and I’m pretending to be nonchalant while leaning upon him. I leaned on Clarence a lot; I made a career out of it in some ways.
Those of us who shared Clarence’s life, shared with him his love and his confusion. Though “C” mellowed with age, he was always a wild and unpredictable ride. Today I see his sons Nicky, Chuck, Christopher and Jarod sitting here and I see in them the reflection of a lot of C’s qualities. I see his light, his darkness, his sweetness, his roughness, his gentleness, his anger, his brilliance, his handsomeness, and his goodness. But, as you boys know your pop was a not a day at the beach. “C” lived a life where he did what he wanted to do and he let the chips, human and otherwise, fall where they may. Like a lot of us your pop was capable of great magic and also of making quite an amazing mess. This was just the nature of your daddy and my beautiful friend. Clarence’s unconditional love, which was very real, came with a lot of conditions. Your pop was a major project and always a work in progress. “C” never approached anything linearly, life never proceeded in a straight line. He never went A… B…. C…. D. It was always A… J…. C…. Z… Q… I….! That was the way Clarence lived and made his way through the world. I know that can lead to a lot of confusion and hurt, but your father also carried a lot of love with him, and I know he loved each of you very very dearly.
It took a village to take care of Clarence Clemons. Tina, I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for taking care of my friend, for loving him. Victoria, you’ve been a loving, kind and caring wife to Clarence and you made a huge difference in his life at a time when the going was not always easy. To all of “C’s” vast support network, names too numerous to mention, you know who you are and we thank you. Your rewards await you at the pearly gates. My pal was a tough act but he brought things into your life that were unique and when he turned on that love light, it illuminated your world. I was lucky enough to stand in that light for almost 40 years, near Clarence’s heart, in the Temple of Soul.
Leonard B. Stern in 2002, and Jane Kean, who appeared on "The Honeymooners." Mr. Stern was a writer for the show. Image Rene Macura/Larry King Live
Leonard B. Stern, Creator of Mad Libs, Dies at 88
By MARGALIT FOX | June 9, 2011 | www.nytimes.com
Leonard B. Stern, an Emmy-winning writer, producer and director for television whose frantic search for an adjective one day led him and a colleague to create Mad Libs, the game that asks players to fill in blanks with designated parts of speech to yield comically ________[adj.] stories, died on Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 88.
His death, of heart failure, was announced by his publicist, Dale Olson.
As a writer, Mr. Stern received two Emmy Awards, in 1957 for “The Phil Silvers Show” (a k a “Sergeant Bilko”) and in 1967 for “Get Smart,” on which he also served as executive producer.
Like Mr. Stern, Mad Libs — bound tablets of stories with blanks in strategic places — has a show-business pedigree. First marketed in 1958, it was born by way of “The Honeymooners” and introduced on “The Steve Allen Show.”
The popular Jackass entertainment and stunt franchise has finally lost it’s first member. Ironically, it was a high speed, drunk driving crash and fireball not a neck breaking porta potty stunt that claimed the life of Ryan Dunn and his pal and Jackass crew member Zack Hartwell. Hartwell was a 30 year old Gulf War veteran whose home was approx. 100 yards from the scene of the crash and explosion.
Dunn was the only bearded member of the Jackass crew and part of the Bam Margera PA based portion of Jackass as well as the earlier CYK project. Dunn is well remembered for sticking a hot wheels car up his butt and going to the ER complaining of mysterious stomach pains after “passing out at a frat party” in the first Jackass movie. Dunn had an easy natural humor and obvious rapport with Margera which was highlighted as they sat in some wobbly chairs while shooting commentary for Jackass 3.5.
Media frenzy fogs the passing of Dunn a 34 year old Pennsylvanian. Anti drunk driving groups are livid his BAC was twice the legal limit. Westboro Baptist Church plans to picket his public funeral service in a divergence from their gay hate agenda. His obituary in local papers is being auctioned for more than a $10,000. The site of the fiery crash has become a makeshift shrine and wreckage is plucked from the lush woods as souvenirs.
Celebrity reactions from Brad Pitt and Roger Ebert make headlines. The tweets and reactions of his surviving Jackass crew make the 6 o’clock news. Notable among them, footage of an openly weeping best friend Bam Margera breaking down at the crash site.
Some even argue it brings to light the lack of public transportation options in many parts of America. Lack of transportation options surely leads to an increase in impaired driving. Some say the Jackass crew’s freewheeling driving terrorized their West Chester neighbors for years. Dunn was traveling apprx 130-145 mph when he missed his exit, veered off the road, crashed his sweet ass Porsche thru 40 yards of woods finally hitting a big tree and exploding into flame. Dunn did not have a spotless driving record.
Lastly and hauntingly, is Dunn’s final movie project LIVING WILL in which he plays a ghost who plays pranks on his living friends. In it he delivers lines such as “dying was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
In the end 2 bright young vibrant men are dead. Two brave, stupid, manly and human men. I extend sincerest condolences to their friends, family, co-workers and fans. It is a reminder to us all of the fragility and preciousness of this mortal coil.
For traditional obit stuff, see a search engine. Click a picture to embiggen.
Partial wreckage of Dunn’s sports car.
Site of the crash and fire.
Dunn geared up for “work.”
Dunn’s car before the wreck.
The Jackass crew in promotional material.
Photo posted by Dunn several hours before his wreck. Since patrons supplied many of his drinks the bar he was drinking at will not be held to account for serving him.
R.I.P. Queenie, World’s Last Water Skiing Elephant
June 1, 2011 | www.roadsideamerica.com
For a brief two years, a Thailand-born elephant named Queenie became the last known live pachyderm to master water skis.
Queenie was taught her craft by Jim Rusing, a member of the Water Ski Hall of Fame and a producer of aquatic thrill shows. She performed several times a day at Florida’s Ponce de Leon Springs (now DeLeon Springs State Park). Queenie was only seven at the height of her fame, and replaced an earlier skiing elephant named Sunshine Sally. She got her first taste of stardom posing for Mercury Outboard Motor ads. Rusing, always a showman, sometimes put a live bear in the cockpit of the tow boat.
